John McCain slams Obama over aides’ private e-mails

President Barack Obama has shown “disdain” for Congress by not honoring its subpoenas, Sen. John McCain wrote to the president.

In a harsh letter written on Monday and subsequently released to the press, the Arizona Republican described an administration that he believes is resistant to the Freedom of Information Act and congressional requests for details of senior administration officials’ email activity.

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Carney on secret email addresses

“Your administration’s disdain towards congressional authority and its failure to disclose public records feeds into its adversarial relationship with Congress and fuels public distrust in government,” McCain wrote, demanding an answer to eight questions about transparency by July 1.

Given acknowledgement by White House press secretary Jay Carney that many top administration officials and Cabinet secretaries use alternate email addresses for internal work so as not to become bogged down in email, McCain asked how Congress and FOIA requesters could be sure they were getting the full results of information requests.

Citing examples of former Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson using an EPA account named after her dog and another private email account used by Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, McCain questioned how using those addresses jibes with the president’s goal of transparency.

“Your administration has long purported to be a proponent of government transparency. How does the use of secret email accounts align with the pledges you and your administration have made to increase transparency?” McCain asked.

Carney said two weeks ago that the addresses are a “practice consistent with prior administrations of both parties” and that FOIA requests and congressional inquiries would include a search “in all of the email accounts of any political appointee.”

McCain wrote that Perez has failed to turn over most of his emails sent from his personal account allegedly used to conduct Justice Department business as an assistant attorney general. Those emails have been subpoenaed by the House Oversight and Government Committee, though Oversight Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) says just 34 of more than 1,000 such emails have been turned over.

“On what basis does your administration condone Mr. Perez’s unwillingness to turn over these emails to the public even after the emails were subpoenaed several months ago?” McCain asked of Perez, who advanced out of committee in May on a party-line vote.